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By Peter Della Penna
USACA
CEO Don Lockerbie is against narrowing the number of teams in the ICC
World Cup while at the same time he is hoping for even greater
expansion of the World Twenty20 beyond the proposed 16 teams by the
ICC. Speaking in reaction to the ICC’s announcement that the Chief
Executives Committee has recommended that the 2015 World Cup be reduced
to 10 teams, Lockerbie does not want to see his Project 15 vision
diminished.
“The overall goal of Project 15 is to be in the top 15 in the
world, regardless of whether we’re doing it through the world ranking
system or through a World Cup,” said Lockerbie in a recent interview.
“So first things first, I just want to get us back into the top 15 in
the world. The ICC has not yet knocked out Associates from having a
chance to be in the 2015 World Cup. If they’re only going to accept 10,
they’re still going to need a fair measure of how teams qualify for
that opportunity and I’ve read with interest the ICC’s comment that it
may be limited to Full Members or they may create a World Qualifier to
do so. The United States of course would hope for that World Qualifier
and follow a very successful format perhaps that FIFA uses and I think
that as cricket continues to grow as a global game, what other sports
do is important as a standard.”
Lockerbie was the Chief Operating Officer of the 2007 World Cup in
the West Indies, an event that spanned almost two full months, and
agrees that the World Cup needs to be shortened. But Lockerbie says
that doing so at the expense of the Associates would rob the event of
some of its most memorable moments and would deny the Associates a
chance to keep on developing.
“I agree that the World Cup has been awfully long. As the COO of
the last World Cup, when you added all the warm-up matches and days, I
think we played 65 matches over 59 days,” said Lockerbie. “That’s
almost twice as long as the FIFA World Cup. So I understand the need to
perhaps shorten our world championship. I also believe that watching
Ireland beat Pakistan in 2007 was a day to remember for many reasons.
We want our chance as we continue to grow.”
One idea Lockerbie is in favor of is eliminating the three tiers
of ICC membership. Instead, he says that the ICC should put every
country through a World Cup qualification process similar to the FIFA
World Cup.
“We don’t want to be limited,” stated Lockerbie. “So I hope that
again, studying what other sports do, the glass ceiling will be broken.
I like the idea that FIFA takes their 204 plus members and allows every
one of them, theoretically and technically, the chance to qualify for a
World Cup, and it’s done by regional qualification. They don’t have
Associate and Affiliate memberships and I absolutely have been making
the point at the ICC meetings that there shouldn’t be an Associate,
Affiliate and Full Member world. There should just be membership into
ICC and that the world championships should all be opened up to teams
who can qualify based on merit and not based on history.”
Another sporting event that Lockerbie thinks the ICC should take
some inspiration from is the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, arguably
the most popular end of season tournament in American sports.
“I have a pretty long association with the ICC and I’m happy that
they’re tinkering with whatever it’s going to take to continue the
growth of the sport and to make it as exciting and popular as possible.
You can look at American sports and I’m old enough to remember when the
NCAA Basketball Tournament only took the champion from the major
conferences,” said Lockerbie, referring to the format of the
prestigious tournament which has seen the number of teams that are
included go from eight teams at the first edition in 1939 to 65 for the
recently completed 2010 edition.
In the 2010 tournament, unheralded Butler University made a
cinderella run to the championship game where they took on perennial
powerhouse Duke University. The game came down to the final possession
as Duke won 61-59 when a half-court three-point attempt by Butler to
win at the buzzer bounced off the rim. The game was the most watched
final in more than a decade. It showed that a small program can compete
with the big dogs when given a chance.
“One of the reasons you could argue why UCLA under John Wooden won
so many championships is that all he had to do is win the Pac-8 at the
time… and wouldn’t have to face any real upset teams,” said Lockerbie,
referring to the famed coach whose teams won 10 NCAA titles in a
12-year span from 1964-75. “Obviously now it’s what 65 teams [and will
be 68 in 2011]. So we’re going in the opposite direction, but I still
also believe that the 50 over game needs to find its niche or reinvent
itself. So I’m happy with the 20 over opportunity because of course
many people argue that that’s the game that’s going to be the most
exciting in the United States and it’s the game that is likely to be an
Olympic sport.
“What I would encourage, is that if the ICC in it’s wisdom is
going to deplete the number of teams in it’s world championship for 50
over, I think 16 is actually too small a number for a Twenty20 World
Cup considering that what we want to do is show its global growth for
the Olympics. I would hope that we would look at a 32-team competition
for T20 or the Global Qualifier would be considered part of the World
Cup in a major way so that as many Associate teams as possible get a
chance to show their own Olympic committees that this is a major event
and that there is a world ranking.”
Lockerbie believes this sort of expansion is vital towards getting
Twenty20 cricket into the 2020 Olympics, which would open up the sport
for better funding. It would also give increased visibility to the
sport and provide players access to better training facilities.
“With baseball and softball removed from the IOC program, cricket
played in 105 countries is hugely important,” said Lockerbie. “Why it’s
particularly important to us is that this would move USACA into the
Olympic family and the United States Olympic Committee and would make
us an active sport. That can provide both funding and government
support as well as IOC support and sponsorship. So that’s very
important to the United States program and if the United States is
going to be one of those countries that the ICC has tapped for growth,
the fastest way that we can grow would be to become and be named an
Olympic sport.
“Now, would we qualify? We have 10 years to try and grow the team
to be a top 16 team to be an Olympic sport for both men and women. This
would provide a great catalyst for popularity and growth because we
would be able to proclaim to people who are interested in our sport to
be future Olympians.”